Making developers into businesses

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Please describe your proposed solution.

We have many years of experience of working with technology entrepreneurs who have we have taken on the journey from startup through growth to large valuable businesses. However, most entrepreneurs lack the knowledge, skills, experience and discipline to be able to grow their one-person company to achieve its potential.

Many developers are adept at putting in place the technical requirements for them to operate a company through to charge for and cost their development capability. This covers areas such as:

·       The product to be created

·       The technology to be used to create the product 

·       Possibly a team to work on the development

·       The funding for the project

·       An understanding of who they will be pitching the product at 

The issue is that they need support to turn the potential of their emergent business into reality and this doesn’t happen overnight. It needs focus, attention and help.

Your reasons for approaching it in the way that you have

We believe that existing growth models are short-term in perspective, and do not value the ‘impactful’ intent of the entrepreneur. This is compounded by the capitalist system’s focus on profit alone as a metric of success, over long-term collective asset and value building.

Describe the value that the solution will add

Our solution will add measurable value to the Companies owned by developers that use it.

The value add will come in the form of:

·       More effective businesses as the entrepreneurial development teams are guided along the growth journey – more money

·       A system for increasing company valuation based on product, market and channel strategies.

·       A plan to grow their business as a successful product – knowing how markets, stakeholder, shareholders and investors operate

·       Demonstrably valuable companies operating in the Cardano ecosystem – maximizing the ability of teams in Catalyst to become fast-growth businesses

This results in better positioning for Cardano to attract a better calibre of developers, who can create better products with better funding.

Describe the scalability of the solution 

Our vision of scalability is to provide an environment where we are scaling the businesses, fast and with focus. 

Describe the sustainability of the solution 

Our view of sustainability is using resources better to grow long-term asset value.

Business sustainability

We will deliver long term business survivability by having the right resources in the right place at the right time to be able to make long-term sustainable profits.

In essence our programme is about enabling teams that already have a technology, product, funding and initial customers to breakout of initial funding dependence, cross the chasm and successfully scale up their operations and businesses

Environmental sustainability and impact

At the core of our approach is our full value Impact dashboard that supports teams in gaining a clear understanding of purpose and focus on Impact. This is done both internally by considering both commercial and cultural impact within their operations and leadership teams, and externally by identifying and running to delivering on the appropriate environmental sustainability goals.

Who your project will engage, or who its stakeholders are 

Our project will have multiple stakeholders:

·       Businesses and organisations who want to participate in the ecosystem

·       Blockchain creators and users

·       Cardano - the overall Cardano ecosystem will benefit from the halo-effect of having high-profile successful Cardano blockchain software development companies

·       Catalyst developers – those people that have the potential to grow successful impactful businesses

·       Individual projects

How your project will be implemented

The solution will be implemented in phases with this initial project focused on supporting five Catalyst entrepreneurial focussed developer teams.

It is a 6-week programme of focused mentoring, coaching and consultancy, delivered in one-to-one sessions with individual teams.

The programme will follow a Project Based Learning approach - where the participants learn by doing the work on their own businesses and through completing a modular programme that delivers them a functional business plan that they implement in real time.

What you will produce

We will produce an online programme of structured learning and development augmented by weekly one on one sessions with the founders, that will take developers to the next level of understanding of how to grow a successful technology business.

What will happen as a result of your work

The outcomes of our proposal will be more developers who will successfully navigate the path to scale up and fast growth.

Additionally, we will have a healthy and flourishing Catalyst business ecosystem who act as a case-study for Cardano, and help towards the success of Catalyst. Ultimately, it will spotlight the success of the Catalyst ecosystem and attract developers.

Explain what's unique about your solution, and what value it brings to the Cardano ecosystem.

We have a proven and successful methodology for supporting the fast growth of high-technology businesses, with a highly skilled, experienced and proven team to deliver it with, within an ecosystem. We deliver a programme that gets teams aligned around their purpose, vision and business journey for fast growth.

We use a tool that looks at the contribution of an entity – such as a person, family, company, collective, community or ecosystem – and the value it adds in terms of its cultural and commercial input; measuring its contribution to wellbeing as well as wealth from the viewpoint of building income AND assets, whilst maximising long term Impact.

Using our audit tool as a compass, we can build a journey for a business owner based upon purpose: focusing on people, performance, planet and profit.

As a result, we move on from pure venture capitalism to collective value creation

Explain who will benefit. Does your proposal primarily benefit.

The beneficiaries of the project will be: 

·      Individual Cardano developers and their companies who will be rewarded from their growth.

·      The Cardano ecosystem through examples of developer’s case studies where they have benefited and profited from their experience and achieved more successful fast-growth businesses. 

IOHK  from the growth of successful developers and businesses within the ecosystem and proving the Cardano Catalyst innovation approach to blockchain growth. This will take them to the next level of understanding of how to grow a successful technology business.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Our proposal will directly contribute to the creation of a positive entrepreneurial developer experience as they are rewarded by not only building successful apps, but also successful businesses.

The following Q&A section addresses the relevant guiding questions in the Developers Ecosystem Campaign Brief.

What are the tools that we need to prioritize first?

These are the business, financial and organisational tools needed to grow their businesses successfully.

How do we attract developers from outside of our current community to participate in Catalyst?

This question is addressed through evidence of fast growth, high performing technology businesses being grown on the Cardano block chain from the catalyst developer community.

What do developers want, and how do they get it from the Cardano dev ecosystem?

Developers want to write code and create products.

To be able to do this sustainably, they need an effective operation that recognises its full value and enables more effective use of its assets on the scaling and growth journey.  

What would make a developer motivated to grind through the docs and code no matter how hard it is to create an app?

By providing developers with a structured toolkit for taking their operation to the next level and supporting them on how to focus and use it. We support developers in keeping the pain of dealing with the increasingly complex business and organisational issues they face to a minimum. We help them to gain the business expertise they need that allows them to focus on the right balance of maker time versus manager time. 

What are enterprise dev managers looking for in order to be able to build out enterprise projects – either internal or commercial?

We believe they’re looking for the ability to write great code and make their customers happy with the confidence that the business stuff is taken care of effectively and efficiently.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

We envisage the following risk:

Developers are too busy working in the business not on it. This is common in all growth businesses.

• The mitigation is to carefully select the businesses and their leaders to ensure that they are ready to manage the balance between ‘maker time’ and ‘manager time’.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

One of the key challenges for young startups is focus, especially for tech team led startups. A common feeling among tech developers is that they can develop anything that is needed using a technology that they are familiar with. However, this might not be the best strategy for the company and focus will be essential to guarantee alignment and efficiency around customers, product, go to market, business model, and finance.

Supporting early stage focused startups will directly impact their results and progress. Our approach is to have a series of direct sessions between the companies and experienced mentors with experience in supporting early stage startups. However, we intend to apply two different methods: process driven consulting and an entrepreneurial approach.

We tested the approach over the past with ‘One Up One Down’ (a business with a project funded in Fund 8), the outcomes being the decision to investigate the support of more companies using the approach, and the creation of a formal replicable model.

The key milestones of this proposal:

Startup selection and onboarding process: Weeks 1-4

• Based on our analysis, we already have a list of companies that are active on Catalyst, presented in this Miro boardboard:  https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVO7zZsHU=/ 
• Analyse the onboarding forms of fund 8 which includes questions about project status and needs (which is also part of the team contribution to the onboarding process) 
• Contact the startups with an intro call and onboard them to the initiative

Run “One on One” sessions - weeks 5 - 10

• 6 x weekly 90 min sessions
• With 2 mentors and senior members of the company
• The initial 2-3 sessions will focus on value and focus examining questions such as - what is it we want to do? who is our customer? what is our product offering?
• * This will include completion of our basic full value audit tool - which will be referenced again at the end of the programme.
• The next sessions will focus on strategy: product, go to market, business models, investors
• The last session will focus on putting together 12 month milestones based on key areas such as product, marketing, finance, team

* We will consider inviting some experts to various sessions e.g. when discussing marketing or technology

* Companies will be given prepared exercises to complete in between sessions

Analysis of the process and reporting - weeks 11-14

• Feedback from the companies - did we help them get to the next level?
• Feedback from the proposal team regarding the efficacy of the process 
• Prepare reports and use cases of the process (information will be shared with agreement of the participants)
• Development of the model into a product for ongoing support of entrepreneurs 

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

This type of “one on one” consulting, or in our case “two on two” is labour intensive and expensive. We have used a consulting rate that will make the budget palatable for Catalyst and the community while also providing reasonable compensations based on over 50 years of collective experience. 

After reviewing the performance of the project, and with feedback from the participants, we will review the programme as ongoing product. By selecting five companies we expect to have sufficient feedback on the process while keeping the budget reasonable. 

• Initial research and identifying 5 companies = $2000
• An intro session + 5 sessions per company = $2400 x 5 companies = $12000 
• Summary, survey, reports and analysis = $2000 

Total budget $16000 

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Yoram Ben Zvi – LinkedIn profile

A social entrepreneur. In the last five years, Yoram is focusing on combining impact and business. A mentor with the international board, operations, and startup experience. Yoram is an active catalyst member, CA, and part of the Cardano4Climate community. In Addition, active in promoting the Catalyst and Cardano community to impact companies and networks to connect them to the ecosystem (e.g. seedstars.com)

• As I am presenting multiple proposals in this fund as well as in previous funds here is an explanation of the workload management.

My strength and focus are on business development activities, partnerships, and strategy, and I am collaborating with team members who have complementary capabilities to make project delivery successful. So my work in each proposal is partial.  Here are some more details. 

• Full-time Catalyst and Cardano - since June 2021 and as such highly engaged with the community and multiple proposals. 
• 3 months proposals that are finalized before new funding arrive - when fund 9 funding arrives, many proposals will be finalized or at the final stages   
• Collaboration with different teams - this is a key element as I am part of various proposals with various teams
• Cardano4Climate proposals - a collaboration between multiple community members and the funds are used to get more members involved. https://cardano4climate.com  
• SustainableADA.com we already successfully collaborated since fund 6
• We are part of CardanoAIM collaborating and getting support by various members as needed to complete the tasks. https://cardanoaim.io  
• Littlefish foundation -  https://linktr.ee/littlefish.foundation, where I am a small fish and part of a growing and active community 
• An important part of Connectality work is onboarding new teams which ask for support advicing an connection to Catalyst  
• Projects that add my name as an advisor - where I dedicate 1 hour per week-bi weekly
• Additional teams we are collboarting with:
• Cardashift - https://cardashift.com 
• Catalyst School - https://linktr.ee/CatalystSchool 
• Wada - https://www.wada.org 
• OneupOnedown - https://oneuponedown.org/  

Harry Hellyer - LinkedIn profile

NED, and chairman, executive and business coach specialising in full value-based impact innovation programmes for enterprises and organisations.

Founding partner of 50th Generation – one of the UK's first Social Business Generational Accelerators – 2014-2018

Credited for supporting the development of the NHS's first Sustainable Development Vision and Strategy programme.

Coached Fellows on the Cambridge University, Programme for Sustainable Development,

Coached Fellows and Lectured for the Cambridge University, Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning - Social Enterprise

VP and director of strategy, marketing strategy and business development for several global IT, media and telecoms companies.

I am presenting multiple proposals in this fund as well as in previous funds here is an explanation of the workload management.

I am part of a catalyst entity called EdifyColabs. This is formed of other catalyst members where appropriate. And it. is backed by our off-chain business Edify Business Ltd - website link enclosed. As such we have a direct team of 5 staff - all of which are working to deliver our Catalyst proposals as appropriate. we currently have 5 funded proposals running across F7 and F8 all of which are weekly programmes in our core delivery space of consultancy coaching and use case design and delivery.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes as this is an initial MVP of a ‘high impact’ coaching / consultancy approach to providing very focussed support for funded Developer proposers who are looking to fast track scaling their teams into businesses.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

We will gain an objective assessment of the impact of the programme by comparing the outputs of the full value audit tool developed by Edify CoLabs taken at the start and at the completion of the programme.

Each participating company will set a clear annual plan with clear KPIs.

We will track the number of projects that are engaged by our system, their increase in value, and their achievement of purpose.

We will track the number of mentors that we engage to work with Cardano entrepreneurs.

We will show how we can culturally adapt our programmes to the audience in each region of the world that we deliver them to and measure the impact of those programmes.

We will track the value created by programmes and show the forensic connection between our programme and this metric.

• Successful completion of accelerator by small businesses members
• Successful business audits completed
• Successful vision and business plans completed
• Number of business, product ideas per member

Key Metrics:

• End of programme review audit
• References from three-month review
• Engagement of alumni on next programme
• Portability of programme
• Scalability of programme role out

Public Update Channel: we will use our Twitter channel: @edifycolabs for updates on project progress

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success is the completion of an initial scale-up programme that has enabled the participants to work ‘on their business’ rather than work ‘in their business’.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is not a direct follow on from a funded proposal.

However, it follows on from an MVP of this programme that was not funded, but which we have been beta testing with a company, One Up One Down who have a F8 funded proposal, and with WADA.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG subgoals:

Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

Proportion of women in managerial positions

Universal Human Rights Index (UHRI):

#proposertoolsdg